And that's a wrap for 2010
This was a pretty active year with lots of changes for me. I don't know if it quite counts as a transformative year, but it definitely started a lot of changes.
This was a year of traveling, and wow, was I going everywhere. Three trips to Atlanta (one for Dragon*Con, one for FWA, and one to support an airshow), Pittsburgh for Anthrocon, two trips to Maine to help my Mom with my stepfather's passing, Little Rock Arkansas for some training, Tampa for my A&P license, the Florida panhandle for Christmas and the Keys for Thanksgiving, and my epic Hawaii trip.
My stepfather passed away in the summer. He has been hanging on for many years, and always managed to pull off an 11th hour recovery after every incident that he had. There was a period in 97 where I really thought he was in his final hours. He had another episode and passed away in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. My mother took it very hard, but she is recovering quickly now. The scattering of the ashes and saying goodbye helped her a lot.
This was an emotional roller coaster year at work. We have successful launches all through the spring and early summer until a mass spectrometer issue with the European payload put us on hold and we haven't been able to launch much since. A lot of stress came in the first few months when the President started changing what it was we were going to do, then congress started weighing in, then other groups, and it was an ugly period even when the President visited here. We started with a plan, not a great plan but it was one, and now we were meandering along with a fuzzy goal and the desire to get the last few shuttle launches off safely. I worked at refurbishment for the booster rockets until we finished and shipped all of our components. Then my manager comes to me and asks if I want to work at the Launch Controll Center for a while which I jump on. It's a different world over at the LCC but it opened up some opportunities and gave me a chance to see some new stuff. That all came to an end when my manager informed me that I was on this round of layoffs, and come October 1 I was finished there. I witnessed SpaceX's maiden voyage, and possibly Atlantis' last. I left the week before they filmed Transformers at the cape, but considering my opinion of Micheal Bay's work and his two previous Transformers movies that's probably for the best.
At home I had house issues. Honeybees in my wall that had to be removed. Fixing appliances that had broke. I changed my services to AT&T's Uverse and have started to get addicted to the DVR service they have. We had a lot of freezes at the beginning of the year (and at the end too) which landed the final blows on my big ficus tree. I bought a very underpowered chainsaw, and spent about two weeks on and off chopping it up. Now I have a gigantic hole in the ground I need to fill with an orange tree. At least I've managed to clean it up some. Now the latest issue is part of my fence has fallen over.
We had a cold long winter, a dry summer with no hurricane scares, and a pretty cold December which makes me think we've got some more chilly months ahead.
I've restarted the trek to obtain my college degree, and I've gotten my Airframe and Powerplant license on the first try. So I am, even now, far more hire-able than I was.
My computer's operating system crashed, and while I lost some stuff I've now got two systems with the newer operating system.
I've been getting a little more checked up medically, and I'm now eight months into adjusting my teeth.
My drawing has improved somewhat, and I'm getting better spurts of creativity.
So in this year I sat at the controls of a real spacecraft, stood where WWII ended and where it began, said goodbye to some family where the first light touches the U.S., helped my sister move to new opportunities, had two teeth pulled, excavated a giant tree, got a new license to work on airplanes, and was layed off for the first time. Some things still look the same as they did one year ago, while other things are very, very different.
In 2011 I hope to finish at least two classes for the spring, and one compressed class in the fall. I'm going to take more effort to better use the free time I've been griping for over the past few years. I'm going to try to upgrade two closets, finally paint the main room, install some shelving in the garage and maybe even get my workbench done. I'm gonna pull all of the old bushes out from in front of the house and try to plant a lot of better looking things along with getting that darn orange tree in place. I'm going to build a new PC from scratch. From late May until early October I'll be out of the area again, and my goal there is to come back with all of my fingers and toes.
Everyone have a happy new year.
This was a year of traveling, and wow, was I going everywhere. Three trips to Atlanta (one for Dragon*Con, one for FWA, and one to support an airshow), Pittsburgh for Anthrocon, two trips to Maine to help my Mom with my stepfather's passing, Little Rock Arkansas for some training, Tampa for my A&P license, the Florida panhandle for Christmas and the Keys for Thanksgiving, and my epic Hawaii trip.
My stepfather passed away in the summer. He has been hanging on for many years, and always managed to pull off an 11th hour recovery after every incident that he had. There was a period in 97 where I really thought he was in his final hours. He had another episode and passed away in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. My mother took it very hard, but she is recovering quickly now. The scattering of the ashes and saying goodbye helped her a lot.
This was an emotional roller coaster year at work. We have successful launches all through the spring and early summer until a mass spectrometer issue with the European payload put us on hold and we haven't been able to launch much since. A lot of stress came in the first few months when the President started changing what it was we were going to do, then congress started weighing in, then other groups, and it was an ugly period even when the President visited here. We started with a plan, not a great plan but it was one, and now we were meandering along with a fuzzy goal and the desire to get the last few shuttle launches off safely. I worked at refurbishment for the booster rockets until we finished and shipped all of our components. Then my manager comes to me and asks if I want to work at the Launch Controll Center for a while which I jump on. It's a different world over at the LCC but it opened up some opportunities and gave me a chance to see some new stuff. That all came to an end when my manager informed me that I was on this round of layoffs, and come October 1 I was finished there. I witnessed SpaceX's maiden voyage, and possibly Atlantis' last. I left the week before they filmed Transformers at the cape, but considering my opinion of Micheal Bay's work and his two previous Transformers movies that's probably for the best.
At home I had house issues. Honeybees in my wall that had to be removed. Fixing appliances that had broke. I changed my services to AT&T's Uverse and have started to get addicted to the DVR service they have. We had a lot of freezes at the beginning of the year (and at the end too) which landed the final blows on my big ficus tree. I bought a very underpowered chainsaw, and spent about two weeks on and off chopping it up. Now I have a gigantic hole in the ground I need to fill with an orange tree. At least I've managed to clean it up some. Now the latest issue is part of my fence has fallen over.
We had a cold long winter, a dry summer with no hurricane scares, and a pretty cold December which makes me think we've got some more chilly months ahead.
I've restarted the trek to obtain my college degree, and I've gotten my Airframe and Powerplant license on the first try. So I am, even now, far more hire-able than I was.
My computer's operating system crashed, and while I lost some stuff I've now got two systems with the newer operating system.
I've been getting a little more checked up medically, and I'm now eight months into adjusting my teeth.
My drawing has improved somewhat, and I'm getting better spurts of creativity.
So in this year I sat at the controls of a real spacecraft, stood where WWII ended and where it began, said goodbye to some family where the first light touches the U.S., helped my sister move to new opportunities, had two teeth pulled, excavated a giant tree, got a new license to work on airplanes, and was layed off for the first time. Some things still look the same as they did one year ago, while other things are very, very different.
In 2011 I hope to finish at least two classes for the spring, and one compressed class in the fall. I'm going to take more effort to better use the free time I've been griping for over the past few years. I'm going to try to upgrade two closets, finally paint the main room, install some shelving in the garage and maybe even get my workbench done. I'm gonna pull all of the old bushes out from in front of the house and try to plant a lot of better looking things along with getting that darn orange tree in place. I'm going to build a new PC from scratch. From late May until early October I'll be out of the area again, and my goal there is to come back with all of my fingers and toes.
Everyone have a happy new year.